I applied for the role online, and then a lady, that's part of their recruitment team contacted me back and told me that the store wanted to meet me, and that I'd been successful to interview stage.
There are 2 interview stages..
The first one is a sit down, one on one interview, where you get asked the basic questions, but you also have to grab a pair of glasses before the interview, and then "sell" them to the interviewer during the interview.
If you pass that stage, you get to the second stage.
They'll call you, and offer you a four hour trial shift, if you're still interested in the role.
During the trial shift, you'll shadow members of the Specsavers team, mostly the ones in "Collections", the "department" where customers that have ordered glasses come to collect them.
I shadowed a 20-something year old blonde girl, and a brown haired woman in her 50s/60s.
You'll learn how to resize frames...basically, they have this machine that blows hot air onto the temples/frame, softing the material the glasses are made from, so that the Optical assistant can reshape them to fit the customer better. I thought the process would be more sophisticated than that, but, you just "melt" the glasses and reshape them.
During this trial shift, (UNPAID, by the way!), they will be looking at how you communicate with customers, the team, and the usual things you can imagine.
This was tricky for me, because when I came into the store to do the shift, the first half of the morning was quiet, so there wasn't really anything to do/say. When you do get a customer, they speak to the person that knows what they're doing, and it's not like you can jump into the conversation, and be like, "YEAH, those ARE your glasses, aren't they?"
I feel like I did well, but there were two women there that I was shadowing, that were childish, catty, mean-spirited and unprofessional.
I'd forgotten to wear my contacts the day of my trial shift, so I couldn't fit a screw into the glasses because the screws are quite small. The brown haired, 50-something year old, that was teaching me how to fit the screws in made a big deal out of it, and was all like, "DO you have you contacts?" Then, she told me that she can't teach me that part, because she doesn't want me to injure myself. She didn't put it that nicely. You'd think the fitting of the screws was this big, important deal, when really, it was one of the maybe, 3 tasks they were allowed to allow me to do perform in that store.
Later on in the day, this same lady, and the blonde girl that I was shadowing were stood in front of me, whispering about me, badmouthing me. And it was all because of the fitting screws incident. They were literally stood there, badmouthing me, thinking that I couldn't hear them, and being unprofessional.
Also, the short, brown haired lady had also had a badmouthing session about me with another short, brown haired lady in the store. She was literally going around the store, trying to find someone she could talk rubbish about me to.
I didn't get the job, and I was okay with that, because I think the pay needs to be higher for the amount fo work that needs to be done by the Trainee Optical Assistants, and the work environment is a terrible unprofessional one in the Harrogate store.
